Let’s put Wednesday night’s five set loss to DePaul in context.
DePaul was eventually going to snap what was Marquette’s 30 match winning streak against the Blue Demons. It was a matter of time because sometimes the nature of volleyball is Physics Is Weird. Eventually, a Marquette team that has no business near the AVCA top 25 rankings was going to run into a DePaul team that is clearly worthy of a top four Big East finish and a spot in the conference tournament, and the two things would collide and give
the Blue Demons a win.
A year ago, Marquette took Big East losses:
- at RPI #130 Georgetown
- at RPI #37 Villanova
- at home vs RPI #22 Xavier
- and all three against RPI #6 Creighton
And after all of that, plus four other top 60 non-conference losses, Marquette still made the NCAA tournament.
DePaul was, on Wednesday morning, #60 in the RPI. Marquette doesn’t have any other losses outside the top 40, and they have a top 40 win over Illinois. For the moment, there’s no reason to officially declare that Marquette has a massive problem in their quest to keep their NCAA tournament streak alive.
They merely have the beginning of that problem.
If Marquette can not pull off a win in Omaha on Sunday — and as you’ll see in a second, we can all admit the odds on that are low — that’s fine. The way the schedule sets up, Carson Tyler & Friends will have a chance to reel off six straight wins before Creighton comes to Milwaukee for the other side of the home-and-home season series. That six game set — which includes a home game against current Big East RPI leader Xavier! — will probably decide whether or not this is an NCAA tournament team. Reel off the wins? Probably on track to get in, based on what we saw last year. Take multiple losses? That’s probably going to be it for Marquette’s hopes.
Or, they could just beat Creighton in Omaha and make everyone say “oh, wait, maybe they’ve got it figured out now!”
This is the first time that Marquette is facing an unranked Creighton team since the spring 2021 Big East championship game. Throwing that weird-o-rama season out the door, the last time these two clashed without the Bluejays in the national rankings was the 2017 Big East championship game. Either way, that still lands us in a situation that we are seeing, in the words of Princess Anna, for the first time in forever.
Both sides of Sunday’s match kind of need the win as a result of some stumbles along the way to this point of the calendar. This one match isn’t going to decide the year for either side, and it’s not quite an Anxiety Bowl for both sides either. But if Creighton’s coming in a little bit shaky, then that’s a great opportunity for Marquette to knock them over.
Big East Match #4: at RV Creighton Bluejays (7-7, 2-0 Big East)
Date: Sunday, October 4, 2026
Time: 1pm Central
Location: D.J. Sokol Arena, Omaha, Nebraska
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Marquette is 7-33 all time against Creighton. The Bluejays have now won seven straight matches against the Golden Eagles, which is all three meetings last year thanks to a matchup in the Big East semifinals, all three meetings in 2024 thanks to a matchup in the Big East championship game, plus the visit to Omaha in 2023. Marquette has not beaten Creighton in Nebraska since the timeshifted spring 2021 season, and they haven’t done it in a regularly scheduled season contest since toppling the Bluejays in the 2013 Big East championship match. MU hasn’t beaten Creighton in Omaha in a regularly scheduled season season match since 2011.
Okay, yes, Creighton’s not ranked, and yes, they’re only two games over .500 on the season, and yes, they’re only there because they beat St. John’s and Seton Hall to start Big East play. Yes, they have losses to Rice and Tulsa, two sub-50 RPI teams as of Wednesday’s first iteration of the rankings. Yes, this would appear to be the most vulnerable Creighton team in some time.
And yet, relative to Marquette’s problems, Creighton’s are minor. At the end of the day, this is still the same Bluejays team that beat RPI #15 Purdue. Their losses are mostly because they went out and scheduled like crazy because head coach Brian Rosen knew he needed to get his team in line with competing at that level. He also made sure that his team was going out and getting as many non-conference matches in as possible, noting in an interview with Six Zone Duo that they were playing three matches a weekend in non-conference play where other teams were only getting two in. Worst case scenario for Creighton there? More time spent playing together and more time spent gelling as a group. Is part of Marquette’s problems right now merely that they have to figure out what they are as a group with so many freshmen involved? Seems like it, right?
Anyway, as far as the Bluejays go, Trinity Shadd-Ceres is carrying the majority of the work. She’s averaging 3.05 kills/set this season, tops on the team, and she leads in total attacks, too. However, she hasn’t started all 14 matches for the Bluejays and on top of that, she’s only hitting .184. That’s overall this season, though. In their two Big East matches, it was Ayden Ames taking the most swings on the team and leading with 3.86 kills/set. Shadd-Ceres was just third on the team in total swings last weekend with Ames taking more than any other two Bluejays combined, so we’ll see what the gameplan is when we get to the weekend. I should note that I’m writing this before Creighton’s match against DePaul on Friday night because this is going up on Saturday afternoon and I’m not going to wake up early on Saturday just to get one extra data point even if that match is now between 3-0 DePaul and 2-0 Creighton.
Elsewhere on the court for Creighton, Katie Dalton is averaging 7.43 assists per set, but she was up above 9.7 last weekend against Seton Hall and St. John’s. She would appear to be the setter of preference for head coach Brian Rosen, but he’s turned to his bench at times this season since Dalton has only played in 46 of CU’s 56 sets to this point of the year. Saige Damrow is making a case for an all-Big East honor at the end of the season with 4.34 digs/set, and Eloise Brandewie’s 1.29 blocks per set are a problem that Marquette is going to have to contend with all afternoon.
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